BPO
Credit and collections
Amicable collections and arrears portfolio management, respecting the applicable rules and the commercial relationship.
What is delivered
Staged contact, from reminder to payment-plan negotiation
Complete communication logs for evidential purposes
Segmentation by ageing and by likelihood of recovery
What legal limits apply to contact?
In a consumer context, the limits are substantial and cumulative. Aggressive commercial practices are prohibited by law and include harassment, coercion and undue influence, which in practice limits contact frequency, timing, and the kind of language that may be used.
Add the data protection framework: the debtor has the right to know who is processing their data and on what basis, and disclosing the debt to third parties, including family or an employer, is processing that rarely has a legal basis and that exposes whoever does it.
We operate with written frequency and timing limits, immediate exclusion at the first request not to be contacted on a channel, and language reviewed against a quality rubric that scores register. These rules cost recovery rate and avoid fines and reputational damage that cost more.
Why is the amicable phase different from the judicial one?
Because the objective is different. In the amicable phase the objective is an agreement the debtor can actually keep, and a plan accepted and broken is worse than no plan: it consumes time, creates expectation and delays the decision about what to do next.
That means honestly qualifying ability to pay and proposing realistic plans, including recommending a case moves to another route when amicable recovery is not viable. An operation assessed only on agreements signed produces agreements that are not kept.
We do not provide litigation or judicial representation. Where the judicial route is appropriate, we hand over the documented case to whoever holds that competence, with the full contact history, which is frequently what is missing when a case reaches court.
How does the record protect both sides?
Each contact is recorded with date, channel, who spoke, what was said and what was agreed. When a debtor challenges the conduct of the collection, the contemporaneous record is the available evidence, and an operation that resolved everything by phone without recording arrives at that discussion with nothing to show.
The record also protects the debtor, and that is not rhetoric. A plan agreed verbally and later disputed by the creditor is a situation where the record is the consumer's only defence, and a serious operation treats the record as bilateral rather than as ammunition.
Recordings are made with prior notice and retained for the period defined in the contract rather than indefinitely. Keeping collection recordings with no retention period is a data protection risk that grows over time and serves nobody.
What difference does the Portuguese variant make?
It makes a difference measurable in complaints. In a conversation about debt, the counterpart is defensive and attentive to tone, and excessive familiarity is read as disrespect while legal formalism is read as threat. The right point is formal courtesy in plain language.
That point is exactly the hardest to produce from a script converted from another variant, because it depends on verb construction and forms of address rather than vocabulary. For that reason teams are separated by market, with native reviewers of the variant being assessed.
In Portugal the electronic complaints book also applies, and a complaint about collection conduct reaches the company and the sector regulator at the same time. That makes record and tone quality a compliance question rather than merely a stylistic one.
How is performance measured?
By value recovered against value assigned, by portfolio age, because a thirty-day debt and a three-hundred-day debt are not comparable and a single rate across both describes neither. Segmentation by age is the first requirement of any useful report.
By adherence rate on agreed plans, which measures whether qualification was honest. An operation with many agreements and low adherence is producing numbers that unravel the following quarter, and the indicator exposes that before the accounts do.
And by complaints per thousand contacts, reported with the same priority as the recovery rate. An operation raising both recovery and complaints is not improving, it is transferring cost to a line that appears later.
Which delivery model is appropriate?
For debtors in Portugal, onshore with native European Portuguese speakers and data inside the European Economic Area. Given the regulatory framework and the sensitivity of the data, it is the model we propose by default and the only one we recommend for consumer portfolios.
For Brazilian portfolios, an operation in São Paulo with native speakers of that variant and under the local regulatory framework, with standard contractual clauses where it handles European data subjects' data. Management and reporting are shared; teams and scripts are not.
We do not propose this service from destinations outside the European Economic Area for European consumer portfolios. The data is sensitive, the conduct framework is local, and the impact assessment that would make it defensible would not reach a conclusion we would want to sign.
When do we recommend not proceeding?
When the portfolio is mostly very old debt against debtors already contacted several times. The probability of amicable recovery in those conditions is low and the contact cost is the same, and proposing the operation would be selling effort with a predictable outcome.
And when the underlying problem is invoicing rather than collection. If a significant share of cases is invoices disputed with cause, the right intervention is upstream, and pressing collection generates complaints that reach the regulator and cost more than the debt is worth.
Where credit and collections can be run from
Not every delivery model suits every service. The table shows only those that make sense for this work, with the data residency position of each.
| Model | Where | When it makes sense | Personal data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onshore Portugal | Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Coimbra, Aveiro, Faro, Funchal and Ponta Delgada | When data cannot leave the EEA, or when the end customer is Portuguese | Stay inside the EEA. No transfer. |
| Brazil | Sao Paulo | When scale and cost are the priority, or the market served is Brazilian | No adequacy decision. Requires standard contractual clauses and a transfer impact assessment. |
The data column describes the applicable framework and is not legal advice. The detail is in international data transfers.
This service carries a variant decision
Are you serving customers in Portugal, in Brazil or in both? The answer changes the operating design, the scripts, who reviews quality and how results are reported.
Related services
- Customer supportContact centre operations in Portuguese, English and more than thirty languages, across voice, email, chat and social.
- Technical supportLevel 1 and 2 support for software, telecoms and hardware products, with structured escalation.
- Back officeAdministrative processing, document management, data entry and internal operations support.
- Finance and accountingAccounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, invoicing and close support, alongside your own accountants.
Frequently asked questions
Do you do judicial collection?
No. We operate in the amicable phase and hand over the documented case to whoever holds judicial competence when that is the route.
What contact limits do you apply?
Written frequency and timing limits, and immediate exclusion at the first request not to be contacted on a channel.
Do you disclose the debt to third parties?
No. Disclosing to family or an employer rarely has a legal basis and exposes whoever does it.
Are calls recorded?
They are, with prior notice, and retained for the period defined in the contract rather than indefinitely.
How is recovery measured?
By value recovered against value assigned, segmented by portfolio age, because a single rate describes nothing.
Do you report complaints?
With the same priority as the recovery rate. Raising both at once is not improvement.
Can it be run from Brazil?
For Brazilian portfolios, yes. For European consumer portfolios, we propose only the onshore model.
What happens to a broken plan?
It is reassessed once and, if the ability to pay is not there, we recommend another route rather than renegotiating indefinitely.
Let us look at the numbers for your case
Tell us which processes you want to outsource, in which languages and at what volume. We come back with a euro estimate and an operating design, with no commitment.
We reply within 6 hours on working days. If you would rather write: info@corpshore.solutions